Hiya!

Last week, I talked about the 5 best entrance theme songs of the WWE’s main roster. This week, I’d like to talk about their main programs, Raw and Smackdown. Actually, I’d like to talk about the problems I think a lot of of people have with the shows. These are the WWE’s main flagship programs. I mean, Michael Cole and the rest of the commentators keep plugging the fact that Monday Night Raw is the longest-running episodic television program in history!

But I’ve been reading about a lot of people becoming incredibly jaded with the WWE’s writing/booking of both Raw and Smackdown. People have said it’s become repetitive and boring. And I can definitely see why because I’m kind of one of them. However, I haven’t reached the point wherein I would just quit watching Raw. I did quit watching Smackdown, though so maybe I’m starting to quit on wrestling myself.

It’s still not too late, though, WWE. There are still a ton of things you guys over at the scriptwriting… sorry, the “creative” department can do to turn things around!

1) Shorten Raw back to 2 hours

When the WWE announced that Monday Night Raw was going to become a 3 hour program, I was an extremely happy camper! I mean, what wrestling fan wouldn’t want more wrestling? So, Raw did become a 3 hour show… but we didn’t get more wrestling!

Guess they removed the “Monday Night” part.

Even though the added an extra hour, it seems like they only write enough stuff that would fill two hours! It’s maddening! You would think they would take this opportunity to build up some of the lesser known guys so that these wrestlers would get more fans! But no. We still focus on the big names like Randy Orton, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and John Cena.

While we’re on the subject…

2) Give us more midcarders

For all you non-wrestling fans, midcarders are the talents that aren’t main eventers yet. You could call them the low level talent but I like to think of them as the supporting cast. And a lot of the times, the supporting cast members break out and become even bigger stars than the guys in the lead roles.

Personally, I don’t really care for the likes of John Cena, Kane and The Big Show. I’m okay with guys like Randy Orton, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose. However, the guys that I do like to see on TV are never really given that much screen time. We don’t get to see that much of Stardust, Fandango, Titus O’Neil, Summer Rae, The Lucha Dragons, Tyson Kind and Cesaro.

These wrestlers are a lot of the reason why I love watching the show and, sadly, a lot of the times, they aren’t given much screen time. They do, at times, give them a little more air time if the WWE notices them becoming more of a hit with the fans. But, once they need to give more time to the likes of John Cena and one of his boring monologues, it’s the midcarders that have to pay the price.

3) Plot out the storylines/feuds

For me, this is the biggest problem of the Raw and Smackdown at this time. For some odd reason, the storytelling/creative department of the WWE can’t seem to put out a cohesive story. From my point of view, in a wrestling show, the action in the ring is only half the reason of what makes wrestling so good. The other half is finding out why they’re fighting.

Yes, in the strictest sense, wrestling is all about the matches but that isn’t the case. Wrestlers never really fought to get paid. They fight for the glory of becoming a champion. They do it to feed their ego. They do it because they can bully the weak. They do it to protect the weak from bullies. They do it to save their loved ones. They do it for a whole lot of other reasons. But they never really fight for money.

There are exceptions, of course.

This is why a lot of matches revolves around two wrestlers feuding against each other. This makes up the bulk of a lot of the drama in wrestling. But a lot of the times, they never go around to giving a clear ending with these feuds. What happened to Kane’s beef with Adam Rose’s Bunny? Why did Brie decide to forgive Nikki even after the humiliation the former suffered from the latter? Why the heck is Bray Wyatt just going after random wrestlers?

They really should work on this by, I don’t know, figuring out how the entire story is supposed to end? It’s like having a great idea but not knowing what to do with it. When they start a new feud, they should have a long game and establish a start, middle and end. Not just end it because they’ve ran out of ideas!

Well, those are my ideas of how to fix wrestling. It’s times like this I wish for the some of the early days of wrestling, where everything was better. A lot of people say the the same thing about old television shows. But are they really true? Next week, I’m going to talk about some of the more popular shows of yesteryear and give my opinions on them! See you then!

Byee!

What are your suggestions on how to make Raw and Smackdown better? Let me know in the comments section below!